How many fingers am I holding up?

Sian Sullivan

5 months ago

In a famous scene in George Orwell’s 1984, Inner Party member O’Brien tests protagonist Winston Smith’s allegiance to Party truth by demanding that Winston sees five fingers, instead of the four he is holding up. Winston’s refusal to see something other than what his eyes tell him is the cue for intense physical pain, courtesy of the Ministry of Love.

O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’“Four.”“And if the Party says that it is not four but five – then how many?”“Four.”The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Winston’s body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. O’Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the lever.[1]

Winston’s crime is to retain a sense of an outside to the reality being dictated to him. He experiences the Party as requiring him to ‘reject the evidence of [his] eyes and ears’ such that common sense itself is ‘[t]he heresy of heresies’.[2]

Winston is unable to fully capitulate to the slogans of the Party. He says the words, but they provoke such cognitive dissonance that he risks all for moments of intimacy and freedom beyond the nightmare reality disciplined by the Party’s thought police.

‘Repeat it, if you please’, says O’Brien to Winston.

George Orwell’s 1984, A Play in Three Acts, adapted by R. Owens, W.E. Hall and W.A. Miles, Woodstock, Illinois: The Dramatic Publishing Co., p. 22.

The power of slogans

A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a clan, political, commercial, religious, and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose, with the goal of persuading members of the public or a more defined target group.

Orwell’s Party slogans War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! are brilliantly dissonant. In asserting discordant causal linkings of familiar categories as ‘truths’, they act to convey something truthful about the deceptions on which modern society is built. Military intervention is indeed asserted as necessary to create and maintain peace, even though all around we see the destabilising effects of unnecessary wars. We might consider ourselves to be free, even though we are bound to states with the power to remove citizenship protections[3], tethered to jobs that may not be of our choosing, and subjected in multiple senses of the term[4]. And it is a commonplace that learning leads to a disorienting of certainties, encapsulated in Einstein’s phrase that ‘the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.’

I can only assume these Orwellian doublethink dimensions were intentional in a recent projection onto London’s Ministry of Justice demanding viewers to ‘Repeat After Us’ the slogan Trans Women Are Women!

For some people the assertion ‘trans women are women’ does something similar to the Party slogans devised by Orwell. It messes with categories in various ways traced below, at the same time as truthfully conveying a contested reality towards which contemporary society is being pushed.

The UK government’s public consultation states that the government is particularly interested in hearing from ‘Organisations working to support individuals of a particular gender – such as women’s groups providing support to victims of violence or sexual assault’. Indeed, the Minister for Women and Equalities opens the consultation by asserting,

I decided to learn more about the public online consultation on reform of the GRA in part because I wanted to understand why I experienced the assertion Trans Women are Women! to be dissonant. I especially wanted to consider how my own ignorance might be contributing to this experience of dissonance. Mostly, however, I felt alienated by the Orwellian tactics deployed to force society to accept this statement as ‘The Truth’, as well as confused by hearing totalising discourses from activists I otherwise understood to embrace anti-authoritarian politics.

Legal, ontological[5] and class dimensions of the assertion have come more clearly into focus as I have gone through the government consultation, read the legislation around it, and engaged with different perspectives and concerns in the lively debate regarding the proposed reforms. In this post, I share what I have learned regarding the complex politics of experience infusing, fabricating and financing the trans gender movement and its intersections with feminism. I provide diverse resources at the end of the post to support others in the UK who may wish to participate in the public consultation on the GRA (please do!).

My overriding sense is that in the UK (as elsewhere) a political struggle is taking place over the category ‘woman’ and who is able to define and inhabit this category. Currently any disagreement with the statement ‘trans women are women’ is being policed by some as a form of Orwellian thoughtcrime requiring punishment. It feels increasingly uncomfortable to stay silent in this context, but it is with trepidation that I share my reflections.

Legal

In the UK today there are two categories of persons legally considered to be women.

1) ‘Women’ are adult human beings who present as the female sex at birth, are recorded as female on their birth certificate on account of this presentation, and in cisgender terms continue into adulthood to identify with this sex. This remains true even though ‘women’ also have diverse bodies and experiences.

WOMEN, persons. In its most enlarged sense, this word signifies all the females of the human species; but in a more restricted sense, it means all such females who have arrived at the age of puberty.

Uncontroversially for a species whose reproductive possibilities rely on sexual dimorphism[6], ‘female’ is commonly defined in physiological terms,

female
adjective
1 of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.noun
1 a female person …

‘Woman’ in this legal sense is thus a category linked with the recording of sex at birth even if ‘[o]ne is not born woman: one becomes it [On ne naît pas femme: on le devient]’, as feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir wrote in 1949.[7]

De Beauvoir’s statement is a core tenet of feminist theory. It draws attention to the fact that the gendered performances of those human beings who present physiologically as female at birth are shaped socially, rather than innately programmed. It should also be obvious, but is worth pointing out again, that saying a woman is an adult female human being is not the same as asserting homogeneity across the bodies or experiences of such persons.

The GRA, and its governance technology of a GRC, thus currently affirms de Beauvoir’s feminist insight that gender identity is both an individual and a societal affair. A GRC can be gained by anyone over 18 who has lived in their ‘acquired gender’ for two years and intends to do so until death.

Under the Equality Act 2010 gender reassignment is also a protected characteristic, but a person does not (currently) acquire the protected characteristic of the sex towards which they are transitioning without acquisition of a GRC. Gender reassignment refers to ‘changing physiological or other attributes of sex’ (as defined in the Equality Act 2010), thus,

Without a GRC, a trans woman is thus legally a male with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment and without the protected characteristic of their acquired sex, although facilities dedicated to women may be accessed where these do not invoke the single sex exemptions of the Equality Act.[8]

In summary, then, the legal category ‘women’ in the UK currently includes those adult female persons comfortable with their recorded sex at birth, and also those adult persons uncomfortable with their recorded sex at birth who have gained a certificate of recognition of the legal reassignment of their sex in adulthood.

Given that those adult persons who have proceeded with formal recognition are already legally considered to be women, projecting Trans Women Are Women onto the Ministry of Justice presumably constitutes a demand for the legal inclusion as women of some class of persons outside the above legal definitions. The context makes clear that the persons in question are those who do not identify with the sex recorded on their birth certificate, have not proceeded with or gained a GRC that legally embraces them as women, but nonetheless self-define as women.

Ontology

noun: ontology; plural noun: ontologies1. the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.

To state that trans women are women thus becomes an ontological demand to open up the category ‘women’ to encompass three groups of persons:

1) ‘cisgender’ women, i.e. adult human beings who identify with the sex recorded on their birth certificate;

2) adult male human beings who have acquired and committed to the protected sex characteristic of female, by being recognised by society to have changed physiological or other attributes and to have acquired a GRC;

and 3) male-bodied people self-identifying as women with varying degrees of commitment to this identification.

Taken to its extreme, the third category here affirms that adult male human beings may insert themselves into the category ‘woman’ simply by saying they are women. In doing so, identity becomes unhooked from both the physiological and the legal bases of the category ‘woman’ (as in the first two legal definitions above).

In the words of feminist scholar Silvia Federici, individual identity here has been acquired through a dissociation from the body:

[t]he product of this alienation from the body … was the development of individual identity, conceived precisely as “otherness” from the body, and in perennial antagonism with it.[9]

It is this unmooring of the category ‘woman’ from the body that provokes pronouncements dissonant to common sense, such as I am a woman, and I have a penis, or claims that lesbians (female homosexuals) should raise their cotton ceiling to permit entry by the penises of so-called trans women lesbians.

Yet the statement Trans Women Are Women! makes an assertion that is neither ontologically given nor socially settled, even if society is being demanded to ‘repeat after us’ its truth. The statement means knitting together two categories conventionally understood as relational polarities, even as diversity within these categories, as well as blurring across their boundaries, is part of how these categories are understood.

Arguably for many, then, demanding that the category ‘woman’ accommodate the adult bodies of any person presenting physiologically as male, requires an act of doublethink. Perhaps most significantly, it requires that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘women’ are emptied of anything unique to define them, thereby appearing to erase the class of human beings conventionally described by the terms.

His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them …
‘Reality control’, they called it: … ‘doublethink’.[10]

It is thus both problematic and alienating (if unsurprising) to find that insertions – assisted by self-identification – of male-bodied people into spaces designated as ‘for women’ or ‘women-only’ do indeed seem to be exacerbating, rather than redressing, this class-based inequality. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that if the only thing required is for male-bodied people to say they are female, and for society to acquiesce to this assertion, then physiological males will begin to colonise spaces reserved by society for women. This scenario is indeed playing out now.

Meanwhile, in the business world an individual presenting as male on some days (e.g. in a grey suit) and as a woman on others (e.g. in a pink dress and blond wig) recentlygained an accolade designated for women, demonstrating that self-identification requires little commitment to the acquired gender. In sports, revisions to international sporting regulations are permitting transgender women to compete in female categories, which some analysts suggest confers unfair physical advantage due in particular to statistically higher levels of testosterone.

there have been 8 homicides of trans people – all biologically male; on the other hand, trans people – all biologically male – have killed 11, 4 of their victims were women. And in the same period, men have killed at least 1,373 women.

At the same time, in recent years a number of empirically documented cases do also indicate that some males identifying as trans gender go on to commit crimes– especially sexual assault – against women and girls; crimes which with self-ID might more readily be reported as committed by a woman instead of by a man. If it is ‘transphobic’ to even observe the existence of these empirical cases, how can there be an open conversation about the safe-guarding required to protect the needs of any of the persons concerned?

Overall, it becomes hard not to see the statement Trans Women Are Women as providing an underhand logic for the further ceding of space by those disadvantaged by patriarchy to those who gain from this societal structure. In being based on a privately and publicly expensive version of identityconsistent with the atomised individualism of neoliberal ideology, self-ID seems foundationally antagonistic to class politics. It appears to be particularly averse to feminism as a political movement critical of patriarchal capitalism.

Why is this antagonism not of serious concern to capitalism-critical activists?

Enter the 2018 Consultation on reforms to the UK’s Gender Recognition Act 2004

Reform of the GRA focuses on several dimensions, including movement towards a self-declaratory model that will relax current rules around legal sex identification (i.e. identification as a man or woman). If passed, this dimension ‘will represent a fundamental change in English law as to who is classed as a “man” and a “woman”.’ In particular, it means accepting – in principle and in law – that a person whose sex presents as male at birth may legally become female purely because they decide that they are, without going through any gender reassignment processes or receiving much by way of societal review of this decision.

Given that female-bodied people as a class disproportionately experience objectification, discrimination and violence at the hands of male-bodied people, it seems both logical and important that concerns regarding these changes are taken seriously. The implied categorical changes to the concept of ‘woman’ also have significant philosophical implications, not least for feminist theory. More prosaically, the potential for men to use legal relaxations both to access spaces conventionally set aside for women, as well as to be favoured (as we have seen) with access to public platforms designated as ‘for women’, are legitimate concerns. It remains unclear what safeguards will be instituted to prevent unintended harms.[11]

Thoughtcrime

Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you. … Your name was removed from registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.[12]

I too am a woman who has experienced sexualised discrimination, harassment and violence at the hands of men in a context of patriarchy. It seems to me that the very fact that so many women are speaking critically about self-ID is a red flag that something is wrong.

Resources

The UK government’s public consultation on reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 is here. The consultation is lengthy but can be filled in and saved as you go.The deadline for submissions is 19th October.

‘Do you think there should be a requirement in the future for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria?’ (Q3)
has been rewritten as
‘Do you think that trans people should have to prove to medical professionals that they are trans enough?’ (Q3&4)

And ‘Do you agree that an applicant should have to provide evidence that they have lived in their acquired gender for a period of time before applying?’ (Q5)
has been rewritten as
‘Do you think the government should have the right to delay someone’s ability to correct their gender?’ (Q5)

I think this undermines the consultation and potentially dilutes the legitimacy of the outcome. It is also disrespectful to the thousands of people completed the consulation online in good faith. If you think this rewriting is cause for concern you can write to GRA.consultation@geo.gov.uk.

Notes

[1] Orwell, G. 2013[1949] 1984. London: Penguin, p. 286.

[2] Ibid. p. 92.

[3] As clarified in philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

[4] As in ‘the immense labour to which the West has submitted generations in order to produce … men’s (sic) subjection: their constitution as subjects in both senses of the word’ (Foucault, M. 1998(1976) The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, trans. R. Hurley. London: Penguin Books, p. 60).

[5] ‘Ontology’ means literally the study of being, i.e. of what can be said to exist. It is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the ultimate nature of reality, that nonetheless is approached differently and concerned with different kinds of beings depending on “culture”. Ontological assumptions denote what entities can exist, into what categories they can be sorted, and by what practices and methods they can be known (i.e. epistemology), for participants in a social grouping sharing and negotiating these assumptions. I discuss ontological dimensions of environmental knowledge and policy in a recent paper in the Journal of Political Ecology.

[11] Given the currently polarised public conversation about the GRA consultation, it might surprise readers that it is possible to engage with the consultation in a nuanced and ‘non-binary’ way. Here are a couple of examples from my own responses to the consultation:

‘Question 5: (A) Do you agree that an applicant should have to provide evidence that they have lived in their acquired gender for a period of time before applying?’

I answered ‘No’ to this question, becauseFeminist theory from Simone de Beauvoir onwards observes that gender is performed in relation to social values and expectations, as well as in relation to a person’s often creative sense of these expectations and their desires not to conform with them. Hence, “living in a gender” is not something the government should be requiring of its citizens, nor is it something that can be policed as such, since there are infinite ways to ‘be a woman’ or ‘a man’. I disagree with any attempts to enshrine sexist stereotypes into law. If a person has a need to change their legal sex because it will ease their sense of dysphoria, or as part of a course of medical treatment, or for some other reason which satisfies the GRA, then there is no need to investigate the way they live their life. Women can live in all kinds of ways and so can men.

My response is consistent with the guidance developed by Women’s Place UK who state that ‘WPUK is opposed to this’ because it ‘inscribes sexism and sexist stereotypes into law’ and ‘works against the rights of both the applicant and other individuals and groups with protected characteristics.’

For ‘Question 20: Do you think that there need to be changes to the Gender Recognition Act to accommodate individuals who identify as non-binary?’ I also responded ‘No’, but not perhaps for the reasons a trans ideologist might think. I wrote,

We are all ‘non-binary’ in terms of gender. We all experience and exhibit traits characterised by society to be ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, and at a biophysical level all our bodies are infused by hormones characterised as ‘male’ and ‘female’, even whilst our primary sexual charcateristics are in most cases unambiguously male or female. The idea that some people are in a box named ‘non-binary’ whilst others are boxed as either ‘male’ or ‘female’ in gender terms simply produces another binary. This is devastatingly unhelpful in terms of engaging critically with the repressive gendered binaries that effect sex-based discimination and exclusions. The GRA should definitely *not* affirm a new binary of ‘non-binary’ and ‘others’.

[12] Orwell op. cit. p. 22.

[13] Trans people have the same human rights as any other person. The characteristic of gender reassignment ‘for the purpose of reassigning the person’s sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex’ is additionally protected under the Equality Act 2010 (as detailed above).